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Ex Nihilo and the Theistic Perspective
- Thread starter Fool
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mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Yes, strictly speaking. Because if god is currently creating, it doesn't follow that it is ex nihilo.
Not necessarily. Ex nihilo creation means that all matter was created out of nothing. That does not mean that creation out of something that now exists cannot also be true, viz., evolution. God creates clay out of nothing. God creates creatures out of that clay he created out of nothing, for instance.
No, how does that follow at all?
but why change the process; when it was working to begin with?
why would a god create something apart from itself and then occupy it?
also, there is no past/future for what is supposedly omnipresent, or all present. if god is everywhere and at all times, then ex-nihilo would limit where god isn't.
god the father, the creator, is creating; so why then not create something from nothing continuously? but that isn't the case as its obvious to see; since we know new babies are constantly being created from something.
In my opinion that is the case and it is obvious to see, each soul which said babies have is made from nothing.
Why not see it as all one process? God first had to create matter, before he could shape matter to make stars and galaxies and planets and people. Even reading Genesis, creation did not all happen on the first day. It wasn't till the sixth day that God created man.
That's what it says in Genesis. There were six days of creation. Not one nanosecond of it.
God is not outside creation, but rather within creation. Time and space and all forms are not outside God, nor God outside them. You can have form or no form, and God still Is. God is not a creature. God IS.
1 Corinthians has nothing to do with that, and Ecclesiastes states my position.
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
No.
God is currently creating, the first step is creating a space of nothingness. This first step is ongoing. If not then all creation would be nullified back into the source.
time is a perspective of a created thing. wouldn't be to an infinite thing. time would be irrelevant. shaping, creating, forming are all synonyms and the idea of forming something from either something else formed or amorphous. god created the world by the spirit and waters per genesis. the waters of chaos. in egyptian belief nun was the waters of chaos.
prior to forming, creating, there was the unformed or amorphous as genesis 1:2 states.
i understand that god is. or i will be what i will be but in being all is god based on that understanding. so then all is created by this being and is being.
1 corinthians 3:16 again states that you are wrong
nothingness doesn't exist. god is not nothing. god is formless, amorphous, no thing but there isn't something from nothingness. god's will, spirit, and the water's were not created.
creating arises from the illusion of forms in contrast to otherness
If ex nihilo then generally there is no need for a God to exist.
Ex nihilo is the main argument I hear offered by theists as to why God must exist.
What is the difference between nothing and no thing other than space?
Yazata
Active Member
I think that 'ex nihilo' in this theological instance refers to the idea that God didn't shape the world out of some preexisting material like a sculpter shapes a statue out of stone.
It was a widespread ancient idea that the reality we perceive comes into being through form being impressed on preexisting formless 'matter', imagined as something like pure potentiality. (It can't actually be any particular thing until it is formed.) That idea is called 'hylomorphism' and is clearly stated by many of the earlier Greek philosophers, though I think that it's older than the Greeks. (The ancient Mesopotamian 'waters' of chaos, since water has no form of its own and takes the shape of whatever contains it. Hence the 'Flood' myths of everything reverting to primordial chaos.)
So the theological 'ex nihilo' seems to be the claim that God created matter as well as form.
As the atheists love to point out (correctly in my opinion) imagining a god as the creator isn't exactly 'out of nothing'. It still imagines a preexisting being that causes/explains the initial creation event. The recent attempts by atheist physicists to imagine reality popping into existence out of abstract quantum field theories (that's you, Lawrence Krauss) appear to me to fall prey to the same kind of objection. (Quantum field theories aren't nothing.)
I suppose that part of the motivation for the 'ex nihilo' idea in theology was to simultaneously accept that God is the sole cause of reality, while denying that God shaped our reality from out of his own divine substance. Rather he just called it up out of nothing.
So it looks like an attempt to head off pantheism/panentheism to me.
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dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Sure it does; it exists as the opposite of something-ness
God includes nothing ; God is everything. Everything includes those things that can exist, those things which can't exist, and those things which might exist.
This seems irrelevant; but I agree none the less. I simply think it's incomplete.
That's your opinion, that's fine. I disagree. Without further evidence it's your opinion vs. my opinion.
I hear you, my response is that there are many details left out from the text you are referring to. We've argued this before. I'm not sure it would be productive to do it again. But, my position is, the verse citing God's spirit and the waters over the deep are in verse #2, and you are ignoring verse #1.
But without ex-nihilo all those forms are nullified into the source like a candlelight is nullified by the sun.
Time is a created thing, yes. From the perspective of the Divine, all time exists within it, and God both outside time and within time. There is only one single Reality, and all that is, is That.
Correct. Form from formlessness.
Correct, as I just stated. Creation, or form, emerges from formlessness. And forms then continue to be created through the process of evolution. Evolution is Spirit creating.